Inked
by Anime Girl23
Summary: Sometimes, your plans for the future don't pan out. Finn's didn't. Now, he reflects over life, tattoos, and what led him to become a tattoo artist. Finn/Puck friendship, gen


Disclaimer: Glee doesn't belong to me.

Inked  
One-shot

Sometimes, Finn really did think it was funny, the way him and Puck had seemed to trade futures after graduation. Puck had been the one with apartment listings in LA bookmarked while he'd been the one looking through army brochures and talking to people in recruitment offices. He had been ready to step up and do the army in memory of his dad, following after what he had already known was a pointless attempt to change his father's dishonorable discharge. Puck had been ready for the sun, the surf, and freedom that Lima hadn't offered him.

They had had plans and they had been good ones. Then, he found out he had a heart murmur that—while it wasn't serious—was enough to disqualify him from the army. By then, he had already sent Rachel off to New York to follow her dreams and with his dashed, he had been lost. Going to LA with Puck had been a Plan C that, a few years ago, would have been Plan A. Only, times changed and they changed and Plan A had become New York and Pace until they rejected him and the army had become Plan B.

On the days he had too much to drink and got bitter, he found himself wondering how he hadn't ended up on Plan Z yet.

He figured Plan D was going to LA alone after the accident happened. Some asshole behind the wheel, too busy with his eyes on his phone and not on the road. He didn't see Sarah and Sarah didn't see him. At least, they all hoped she didn't. A tiny body against a speeding pickup. She was gone by the time Puck had heard the screech of tires and made it outside. Six years later and he didn't think Puck had forgiven himself yet.

Puck had been the one to disappear into the army instead of him, searching for some kind of structure after his world had fallen apart. Sometimes, he wondered if it was the right thing for Puck to do. He hadn't been the one to hug Rina after the guy got on his plane to Georgia and listen to her sob that she had already lost one of her babies and _please, God, don't take the other_.

They lost touch for a while after Puck left and dove head first into training. Honestly, he might have been a little jealous at the time, angry about Puck getting the future he'd been rejected from because of a heart problem he hadn't known he had. The feeling had stayed there for a while as he unpacked his stuff in the LA apartment that was supposed to be his and Puck's and, instead, was only his. A second bedroom he didn't need. A view of a building even taller than the one he was living in. Really, it had been a crappy apartment from the day they found it on the website, but it had been affordable and the utilities had been included. Together, it was something they could manage. Alone, he couldn't.

He took a roommate around the same time his mom mentioned to him that Puck had been transferred to North Carolina from Georgia. Javi had been cool, covered head to toe in tattoos so much that he had been scared of him when they first met. The fear had faded when the guy spoke, though, laughing and joking like they had known each other as long as he and Puck had. Never once ashamed of the tattoos covering his skin, no matter what people thought when they looked at him, probably searching for gang symbols he didn't have. He was proud of every tattoo on him.

"_It's art, man. Why put it on the walls when I can put them on myself?"_

Javi had been the one to take him for his first tattoo, poking fun at him in the accent that was half-Brooklyn and half-Spanish while a man with a spider web tattoo on his neck pressed a buzzing needle to his arm.

He had watched, awed, as the little machine worked, etching a design into his skin. Watched as the artist worked, his hand steady and calm as he drew a pair of drumsticks onto his forearm. Javi was right. It was art.

One tattoo and he was hooked.

The drumsticks.

The music notes on his ribs.

The _don't stop believin'_ that went across a shoulder blade.

The little flower Sarah used to draw in all her notebooks went onto his calf, memorialized, because there may have been no blood relation, but she had been his little sister too, and he wanted to remember her.

His body had become a canvas and the press of the needle against his skin had become something good instead of scary. His mom hated them—and, he thought, Javi for the part he had played in it—moaning and complaining about what he was doing to himself and begging him to stop with every new one he got.

"_Finn, please. No one will take you seriously if you're covered in tattoos. Think about your future. Think about jobs."_

Becoming a tattoo artist wasn't something he had really thought about until Puck had come to visit him two years after graduation and spent half the night flipping through his sketchbooks. He had been enrolled in art classes for a year at that point and as good as his stuff was, he never felt satisfied when he looked at the finished product. The drawings never looked complete on paper. The life wasn't there, not like it was when it was ink on skin. It wasn't as personal.

"_What's on your leg?" Puck asked, frowning as he leaned forward to get a better look._

"_Sarah's flower," he said as Puck's fingers touched the tattoo. Barely a brush of fingertips against skin, but he shivered, and bit at his lip as Puck stared. "You okay?"_

_Puck nodded, but Finn was pretty sure it was a lie, because the guy looked like he'd just been punched in the gut. "Just…haven't seen it in a while, I guess." He glanced up at Finn and, for a second, the soldier he'd become disappeared, replaced by the guy that hadn't gotten over losing his little sister. "You got this for her?"_

_He shrugged. "It was her favorite thing."_

Puck had flown back to North Carolina a couple days later with a healing tattoo on his forearm. None of them brought up the way he'd cried while Javi—finally a certified tattoo artist himself—had drawn it on, but Finn wondered if Puck might have let go of that guilt a little bit.

There was something in it, he thought. Watching someone get a tattoo that actually meant something to them. That flower wasn't some decision brought on by too much alcohol and a giggling declaration that one of the sample designs was pretty. It was a memorial, something that would stay with Puck—and with him—so that no one could forget the smiling little girl that planted a little garden around the lamp post in the front yard. It was strength, like the woman that came in and had _survivor_ tattooed on her bald head so that when her hair grew back after chemo, she would be branded with something more than the scar from the port on her chest. It was the man who came in and asked Javi to tattoo a phoenix over the long scar on his arm, because he had risen from the ashes and the pain of a suicide attempt. It was the couple that held hands while they had their stillborn baby's footprints immortalized on their chests.

Everyone had a story and being able to tattoo it on their skin… In the moments when he got sentimental and his chest ached as he listened to someone talk, he thought it was a gift.

The first tattoo he ever gave was to Javi, his hand shaking until he powered the machine on and everything in him went calm. He pressed the needle to his friend's arm, tracing the outline of the letters. Something simple for his first tattoo, but he knew that he'd grow as time went on.

"What's the story?"

"My ma," Javi said. "Told you before. Just me and her growing up. Shitty apartment back in Brooklyn that we could barely afford, but I never saw her upset, you know? She was always singing some little song. Used to drive me nuts, because they never made any sense, but she never stopped. Only real song she ever sang was that one from the end of The Breakfast Club."

"My mom loved that movie," Finn chuckled.

"My ma couldn't stand it," Javi laughed. "She just liked the song. When she died last month…" His voice trailed off and as Finn went to add more ink to the needle, he saw his friend's eyes tear up for a second. "Got in the car after I left the hospital and it was the first damn song on the radio. Cried like a fuckin' baby. Only song I've listened to on my iPod since."

"You like the song?"

"Not a bit, but it makes me think of her."

"Kinda what matters, right?" Finn asked and Javi nodded as he set the machine down, wiping away the excess ink. "Done."

Javi glanced down and Finn was pretty sure he saw the tears come back, which was kind of awesome. That was the point of all of this. Giving people tattoos that mattered. "_Gracias_."

"Welcome," he said as he looked down at the lyrics twisted between Javi's other tattoos.

_Don't you forget about me._

He hummed the song for the rest of his shift.

The End


End file.
